Sir Jasper Kingsland stood moodily alone. He was in the library, standing by the window--that very window through which, one stormy night scarcely a month before, he had admitted Achmet the Astrologer. He stood there with a face of such dark gloom that all the brightness of the sunlit April day could not cast one enlivening gleam.
He stood there scowling darkly upon it all, so lost in his own somber thoughts that he did not hear the library door open, nor the soft rustle of a woman's dress as she halted on the threshold.
A fair and stately lady, with a proud, colorless face lighted up with pale-blue eyes, and with bands of pale flaxen hair pushed away under a dainty lace cap--a lady who looked scarce thirty, although almost ten years older, unmistakably handsome, unmistakably proud. It was Olivia, Lady Kingsland.
"Alone, Sir Jasper!" a musical voice said. "May I come in, or do you prefer solitude and your own thoughts?"
The sweet voice--soft and low, as a lady's voice should be--broke the somber spell that bound him. He wheeled round, his dark, moody face lighting up at sight of her, as all the glorious morning sunshine never could have lighted it. That one radiant look would have told you how he loved his wife.
"You, Olivia?" he cried, advancing. "Surely this is a surprise! My dearest, is it quite prudent in you to leave your room?"
He took the slender, white-robed figure in his arms, and kissed her as tenderly as a bridegroom of a week might have done. Lady Kingsland laughed a soft, tinkling little laugh.
"A month is quite long enough to be a prisoner, Jasper, even although a prisoner of state. And on my boy's christening fete--the son and heir I have desired so long--ah, surely a weaker mother than I might essay to quit her room."
The moody darkness, like a palpable frown, swept over the baronet's face again at her words.
"Is he dressed?" he asked.
"He is dressed and asleep, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon, his godmother and godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian angels. And Mildred sits en grande tenue on her cricket, in a speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency almost indescribable. The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma to make it complete."
She laughed as she spoke, a little sarcastically; but Sir Jasper's attempt even to smile was a ghastly failure.
Lady Kingsland folded both her hands on his shoulder, and looked up in his face with anxious, searching eyes.